Op­po­si­tion moves

Ex­clud­ing the Congress from the Sa­ma­jwadi Par­tyBahu­jan Sa­maj Party com­bine’s al­liance in Ut­tar Pradesh has been the sub­ject of lively me­dia de­bate soon af­ter the an­nounce­ment by the re­spec­tive party lead­ers, Akhilesh Ya­dav and Mayawati. The con­sen­sus in these de­bates has re­volved around a land­slide win await­ing the SP-BSP al­liance. Me­dia dis­course, how­ever, seems to have over­looked one im­por­tant de­ter­mi­nant of the poll out­come, namely, the Congress’s role as a vote di­vider. Although the Congress hardly cre­ated a rip­ple in the State in the 2014 Lok Sabha as well the 2017 As­sem­bly elec­tions, 2019 is un­likely to turn out to be another dis­mal event for the party. Elec­tions in Mad­hya Pradesh, Ra­jasthan and Ch­hat­tis­garh seem to have her­alded the resur­gence of the na­tional party. The for­ma­tion of an al­liance-led govern­ment in Kar­nataka has boosted the morale of its cadres. Party pres­i­dent Rahul Gandhi has also been on a pro­pa­ganda jug­ger­naut. In U.P., the party is sure to have a re­spectable share of votes in most con­stituen­cies par­tic­u­larly those with pock­ets of mi­nori­ties. The divi­sion of votes will def­i­nitely hurt the gath­band­han to the ad­van­tage of the BJP.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s line at the BJP’s na­tional coun­cil meet crit­i­cis­ing the al­liance pol­i­tics of the Op­po­si­tion says much about the po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties. The new­found friend­ship between arch